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Elizabeth files suit against her friend, Zach. They spend a lot of time together watching TV at Zach’s apartment. But Elizabeth is unhappy with his living room seating arrangement. She would like him to add a chair, but he says the couch he has is enough! Who's right? Who's wrong? Show notes

Erin Gibson and Bryan Safi bring their popular podcast "Throwing Shade" to Philadelphia for an evening of well, everything. Ready yourself for an evening of 'sues, shade throwing, phone calls, bad impressions, frank sexual talk and most importantly, Erin and Bryan presenting all the issues important to ladies and gays, and treating them with much less respect than they deserve. Come spend an evening with Erin and Bryan and other superficial people who care a lot.

This week:Sort Reform
David brings the case against his wife Natily. The issue? LAUNDRY. When it's clean, how should it be folded and prepared to put away? David sorts it into two big piles: his and hers. Natily prefers to have her clothing sorted by article. Judge Hodgman puts them both through the wringer!

The Right Not to Bare Arms
Peter and Barbara bring their case involving parenting and medicine to the court. Barbara recently struck a bargain with their daughter at the doctor's office: if she would take her flu shot without crying, Mom and Dad would each get a flu shot, too. Peter wasn't there to weigh in on the deal and refuses to honor it. Did Barbara have the right to make this bargain, and should Peter comply?

Plus: a session of "If It Pleases the Court" with musical performances from special guest Jonathan Coulton. Check out his album Artificial Heart now, and look for his Christmas album with John Roderick this winter.

MANY, MANY THANKS again to
The team at the Greene Space for their help in making our live shows possible!
Dr. Elizabeth Gifford for medical expertise!
Jonathan Coulton for music based on domestic disputes!
And our live litigants, for bringing their problems before strangers!

Brian Heater and Alex Zalben join us this week to share some great comics. Brian recommends Skyscrapers Of The Midwest by Joshua Cotter, a beautifully illustrated story of growing up and imagination. Alex suggests Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson, an exploration of young adults living in New York in the 90s, informed by the author’s life experiences.

Ice sits down with us to talk about his desire to bring an artful appreciation to hip hop's origins and about going through his phone book to sit down with friends to discuss the craft. He'll also answer that lingering question: did he ghostwrite for an 80s rap album by Mister T? This interview originally aired June 12, 2012.

For much of his musical career, Aaron Freeman might have been better known to you as Gene Ween, guitarist and co-founder of the experimental rock band Ween.

In May, Freeman released his first solo record, Marvelous Clouds, a collection of covers of songs by 60s poet/songwriter Rod McKuen. Earlier this year, Freeman announced he was retiring the Gene Ween persona for good. This week he tells us about the song that changed his life: Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry". This interview originally aired June 12, 2012.

Greta Gerwig is an actress and filmmaker, whose starring role in the 2007 comedy Hannah Takes the Stairs put her right at the heart of the mumblecore movement. She's since gone on to leading roles in bigger indies alongside Ben Stiller in Greenberg, as well as major motion pictures like Arthur, opposite Russell Brand. The indie darling has had a particularly prominent year in 2012, with starring roles in Damsels in Distress, Lola Versus, and Woody Allen's To Rome with Love. All are available now on DVD.

Greta joins us to discuss her artistic upbringing in Sacramento (complete with dreams of being a ballerina) and her meteoric and slightly serendipitous rise as an actress. This interview originally aired June 12, 2012.

On this week's Outshot, Jesse misses the old days of pure wacky comedy insanity exemplified by the unfiltered goofiness of Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I. This segment originally aired June 12, 2012.

Little Atoms [RSS] [iTunes] used to describe itself as a conversation about “conspiracy theories, cosmology, religion, the new age, human rights, and the state of the left.” Surely you can sense where that list hits a sour note. Conspiracy theories, cosmology, religion, and the new age fall into the wheelhouse of any show about truth and falsity. Podcasting, the medium that brought us the slightly wearying procession of Skeptoid, Skepticality, Skeptiko, and so on (you ultimately end up at Skepchick), has more than welcomed this sort of thing. Human rights, as a subject, can receive interesting or uninteresting treatment depending upon the context. But the very last thing I hope to hear when I hit play on my iPod is an earnest discussion of the state of the left. And I have no particular love for the right, so perhaps this illustrates the left’s whole problem. Implying that the left has a natural place in the grand separation of fact and delusion brings back to my mouth the bitter disappointment I tasted after momentarily believing the hype about leftism as the politics of the thinking man. We realize later in life that, alas, no -ism truly permits the thinking man.

Hence, I imagine, Little Atoms’ modified current opener, which more broadly but much more appealingly promises a show “about ideas and culture, with an emphasis on ideas of the Enlightenment.” You could describe this as a program about science and rationality, if you concentrate on certain episodes: Ben Goldacre on evidence-based medicine [MP3], Christopher Hitchens on atheism [MP3], Lisa Randall on cosmology [MP3], James Randi on pseudoscience [MP3], Mark Henderson on “why science matters” [MP3]. But in my experience, podcasts exclusively concerned with that can turn oddly pious; you can only listen to so much veneration of the scientific enterprise before beginning to feel you’ve lost its context. The pursuit of the truth, though one of the more robust single justifications one can muster for one’s work, strikes me as not quite a wide enough slice of the human experience. I would gladly take the side of logic, reason, and reality, but man, some of the guys on that team dress like real schlubs.

This program, then, gets even more fascinating when not directly discussing science- or rationality-oriented topics. Its conversation with Ian McEwan [MP3], for instance, whose last novel starred a “fat bastard” of a theoretical physicist, brings a funny kind of cultural skepticism to bear on scientists themselves. Its conversation with Iain Sinclair [MP3] approaches one of the show’s pet topics, the built environment, through the life experiences of a man who has written so personally about it for so long. And to get a sense of when things really hit their stride, listen to the three appearances of writer, television host, and This American Life regular Jon Ronson: on agnostics who turn Christian [MP3], on the diagnosing of psychopaths [MP3], and on his career [MP3]. Widely interested, slyly humorous, culturally high-profile, ever sensitive to bullshit, British: Ronson embodies the kind of sensibility that resonates well with Little Atoms’ own.

No pun intended with that “resonate,” for those who already know that the show originates as a broadcast from London’s freeform radio station Resonance 104.4 FM. This location and its relative lack of restriction places Little Atoms well to showcase a certain species of celebrity, or perhaps “public thinker,” or possibly “public communicator,” which has never quite taken root here in the States. As a regular guest of Ira Glass, Ronson has actually made deeper inroads into America than most of them. I speak of men, usually men of letters, who move freely from subject to subject, medium to medium, writing, speaking, and generally producing on whatever subject strikes them as vital. This show first intrigued me by offering an interview with Chris Petit [MP3], the man who directed Radio On back in 1979. He’s since written novels of various types and crafted films and television programs of various forms, even collaborating at one point with Sinclair. It makes sense that they’d get together; since the both men — as well as this program that has hosted the both of them — do work undergirded by a sense of place.

Of course, the strongest sense of place comes possessed by one of Little Atoms’ most frequent guests, a certain Jonathan Meades. A food and architecture writer as well as a novelist, broadcaster, inveterate sunglass-wearer, and what the U.K. calls a “presenter,” Meades has turned up many times, discussing things like building in Britain [MP3], his own semi-comedic televisual manner [MP3], and the possibiliy of urban renaissance [MP3]. Though by no means an Anglophile, I’ve long burned with jealousy over Britain’s ability to accommodate a reasonable number of well-known figures like Meades. They seem simply to fill the subject-independent role of “interesting guy” — of, in other words, the thinking man, and as Meades explains on one of these interviews, he creates what he himself would like to read and watch. Clive James, a prime exemplar of this sort of vocation, has said that his sort of celebrity doesn’t export well because Americans like to know exactly what’s in the can when they see the label. And even Meades, when he happens to come up on Little Atoms broadcasts not actually involving him, has been described as relegated to the “BBC Four ghetto.” But having glanced at the BBC Four schedule, I daresay I’d move into those tower blocks at a moment’s notice.

Andy Secunda and Brea Grant join Jordan for a discussion of staying "on brand", destination weddings, different types of fans, and their new webseries, Game Shop.

Ting, one of our sponsors on this week's show, is offering a special deal to JJGo listeners -- visit jordanjessego.ting.com, and $50 off will automatically be activated for the purchase of your first device.